thoughts on God [unfinished]

A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading the book god is not great by Christopher Hitchens. Out of its reading, I have concluded this: It is near impossible to discuss faith with a person who holds strictly to science and reason. I imagine such a conversation going something like this:

"Well, the Bible says..."
"I don't believe in the Bible."
"Then Jesus said..."
"Jesus never existed."
"Okay. Then faith tells me..."
"Faith? Bah!"

Pointless. Absolutely pointless. The most contested area between the atheist and the theist revolves around the reality of the metaphysical, and the existence of God. Atheists, if they hold to a strict naturalist worldview, will never consider whether or not anything exists outside of the quantifiable physical world in which we live and move. In my estimation (and experience), this view is extremely limiting and potentially dangerous. Case in point:

Several years ago I was part of a team leading a group of teenagers through the streets of the Downtown East Side of Vancouver. In an unplanned moment, due to a need to fill some time, we decided to do a "prayer walk" along East Hastings, starting from Main and walking West towards Pigeon Park. I ended up with a group of about 10 teens, and we decided to simply walk East to West on the North Side of Hastings, praying silently as we went. It wasn't long before we were stopped by a woman in the most unusual way. All I remember of the words in her half-minute montage, and only because they were directed at me, were "You son of Satan!"

Let me clarify. As a group, we were not loudly stating our prayers--we were not obvious in our actions as we walked. And before that day, and since that day I have walked along East Hastings a number of times and never been stopped, approached, or yelled at. This has become a moment in my mind that clarifies, solidifies and proves to me the existence of a world outside of the physical, quantifiable realm. It may not be enough for the greatest of skeptics, and I will accept that. Hitchens may suggest that this woman simply had a mental issue, which is medically speaking very likely. But then, my question is, Why at that moment? Why did this woman decide in that moment to spew her words towards us, as we walked and prayed? And more importantly, Why those words? Of the wide variety of expletives available in the English language, why did she choose to get the devil involved? The worldview I adhere to suggests that we are living in both a physical and spiritual world, where a battle continues to rage between God and Satan--a world that we can encounter from time to time.

You may ask, Why do I not experience this more often? To which, I can only restate what I have written about before: the distractions of the culture we live in greatly diminishes my ability to recognize God in the everyday. And perhaps, that is the struggle of atheism. In a world where reason and science rule, in which humanity is the apex of evolution, it is a wonder that one would look beyond himself and the physical world in which he exists. If one does not expect to know anything outside of himself and the physical world, how can he experience anything else? Without the experience of God, modern society would simply turn into the narcissistic, ego-centric, self-gratifying, greedy, and sexually confused kind of world we are all a part of. The distinctiveness of the Christian faith should point foremost to a Creator God through whom all things live, move and have their being.

Of course, this unfinished thought did not touch at all on many of Hitchen's tiresome, sarcastic and anti-religious tirades concerning the historicity of religious wars and the unfounded proofs concerning the Bible (valid points which I hope to get to eventually). But without at least a hint of the existence of God, there would be no point in bringing that up. Perhaps in a future post...